Butler makes his star-making, muscle-baring turn as the Spartan King Leonidas in 300, the film adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel. "Gerry carries the movie," director Zack Snyder tells Newsweek. "There was a concern that if we had an actor who people did not know, they wouldn't know who to follow in this tale. But Gerry has such powerful charisma and presence, you just want to be led into battle." The film debuts with ticket sales of $70 million over its opening weekend.

In 1796, citizens of Philadelphia were awakened on?Feb. 22?by a 15-cannon salute.?Other cities marked the day with orations, parades and balls. “The celebration of the birth day of our beloved President has been so great throughout the States as leaves not the shadow of a doubt that he continues to be ‘THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE,’” a Worcester, Massachusetts, newspaper blared.The most fervent and consistent Lincoln celebrants were probably African-Americans, who invoked the “Great Emancipator” in their ongoing quest for civil rights. “I care more for Lincoln’s great toe than for the whole body of the perfect George Washington,?of spotless ancestry,?who ‘never told a lie’ and never did anything interesting,” black scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois quipped in 1922.

You were made witting if you were those elected positions but you could be recruited by several other mechanisms. One was in 1953, a six-week seminar called the International Student Relations Seminar. People were very carefully selected for that seminar and while they were learning about international student politics in eye-glazing detail they were undergoing background security investigations.?Could you be a higher-up in the NSA and not be brought into the fold??